


Miles To Go Before I Sleep

by Lumy12



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6615952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumy12/pseuds/Lumy12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel flirts with death after his injury in Colorado.  Title taken from my favorite Robert Frost poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Written for the April challenge at the <a href="http://puzzleprompts.livejournal.com/">livejournal community 'puzzleprompts'</a>, using 3 of the 6 prompts (a winter's night, time, & bloody) AND a true drabble of exact length... er, according to MS Word. (300 words which AO3 counts as 298? bah)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miles To Go Before I Sleep

The cool, crisp air of fall was gone, chased away by the cruel bite of winter.  Joel had been slipping in and out of consciousness --and lucidity-- for God knows how long, losing all sense of time, but it seemed that this change had happened awfully fast.  Day and night had swapped often enough that he knew it had been at least several days since he’d fallen.  It felt like mere moments had gone by, even if each moment inexplicably seemed to span hours.

His fuzzy brain was playing tricks on him.  He was bleeding to death…  _no, my shirt’s bloody but dry._ He was freezing to death…  _no, my head’s on fire._ He was  _something_ -ing to death -- the pain in his side was unrelenting, unbearable.  He wanted everything to stop.  The end was near; he could feel it.  Like a hokey cliché, snapshots of his past flitted before him.  Resigned to his fate, he closed his eyes... yet every time he did, it was as temporary as sleep.

He woke in darkness to a shadowy figure hovering over him.  Small, silver-haired, glowing… _Sarah?_ Was he delirious enough to believe in angels now, or…

“Oh thank God.  Joel, don’t die on me.  You can’t.  I need you to… I  _need_  you.”

 _Ellie!_ It was moonlight that defined her as a silvery silhouette.  Her cold hand soothed his fiery face for a moment, or maybe hours… he was slipping away, and she felt it, her head on his chest, body quaking with silent sobs.

Then something inside him snapped into place.

 _I can’t leave her all alone, I’ve gotta fight._ Ellie tethered him to this world; he wasn’t going anywhere.  Unable to transform the thoughts into words, he’d have to show her –- by not dying. _I got this._  


End file.
